Agents

The Mutexer agent exposes the Mutexer OS platform through port 80 as standard HTTP traffic. We recommend that you use a reverse proxy to secure the traffic.

INFO

Mutexer agents prior to 1.0.18 exposed the Mutexer OS on the hard-coded port of port 80. Agents running this version or later expose the Mutexer OS by default on port 8523

Overview of a reverse proxy

A reverse proxy sits between client devices and the backend Mutexer agent, acting as an intermediary that receives all incoming requests on behalf of the agent. Rather than clients connecting directly to the Mutexer agent, they connect to the reverse proxy, which then forwards the request to the agent internally and relays the response back to the client. In this configuration, the reverse proxy listens on ports 443 (HTTPS) and proxies all traffic to the Mutexer agent running on an internal port. The Mutexer agent itself is not directly exposed to the network — it only accepts connections from the local machine via the reverse proxy. This provides several benefits. First, SSL/TLS termination is handled at the reverse proxy layer, meaning the Mutexer agent doesn't need to manage certificates or encryption itself. Clients communicate securely over HTTPS to the reverse proxy, which forwards the request to the Mutexer agent over plain HTTP on localhost. Second, the reverse proxy provides a layer of abstraction - the agent's port, host, or even underlying technology can change without affecting how clients access the service. Third, it allows the reverse proxy to handle concerns like request logging, access control, header injection, and HTTP-to-HTTPS redirection independently of the application. From a network perspective, the only ports that need to be open to clients are 80 and 443 on the reverse proxy host.